Nano-Biohybrid Light-Harvesting Systems for Solar Energy Applications
- PDF / 2,462,435 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 15 Downloads / 212 Views
Nano-Biohybrid Light-Harvesting Systems for Solar Energy Applications
Woo-Jin An1, Jessica Co-Reyes1, Vivek B. Shah1, Wei-Ning Wang1, Gregory S. Orf2, Robert E. Blankenship2,3, and Pratim Biswas1 1 Aerosol and Air Quality Research Laboratory, Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1180, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A. 2 Department of Chemistry, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1134, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A. 3 Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1137, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A.
ABSTRACT All photosynthetic organisms contain light-harvesting antenna complexes and electron transfer complexes called reaction centers. Some photosynthetic bacteria contain large (~100 MDa) peripheral antenna complexes known as chlorosomes. Chlorosomes lose their reaction center when they are extracted from organisms. Lead sulfide (PbS) quantum dots (QDs) were used for artificial reaction centers. Successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) allows different sizes of PbS QDs with different cycles to be easily deposited onto the nanostructured columnar titanium dioxide (TiO2) film with single crystal. Chlorosomes were sequentially deposited onto the PbS QDs surface by electrospray. Compared to the typical PbS QD sensitized solar cells, overall energy conversion efficiency increased with the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) effect between PbS QDs and chlorosomes. INTRODUCTION Metal oxide-based solar cells such as dye-sensitized or quantum dot (QD) sensitized solar cells have shown potential for replacement of conventional silicon based-solar cells [1]. Compared to the commercial silicon photovoltaic (PV) devices, the energy conversion efficiency of metal oxide-based solar cells is much lower, although silicon is not an ideal material for photovoltaic devices. To harvest wide-light spectrum is necessary for highly efficient photovoltaic conversion. Despite many efforts to harvest wide-light spectrum with co-sensitizers [2-5], the energy conversion efficiencies don’t seem to be improved easily. Natural photosynthetic assemblies, chlorosomes have evolved to capture photons and funnel them towards a reaction center for charge separation with a higher quantum and energy conversion efficiency than artificially designed assemblies. Although chlorosomes have superior properties for harvesting wide-light spectrum, unfortunately, chlorosomes cannot be directly utilized as sensitizers for photovoltaic devices. This is because when chlorosomes are extracted from organisms, they lose their associated reaction center, which functions as a charge separation
center. Modesto-Lopez et al. employed black dye molecules to replace the reaction center that is driven by the chlorosome [6]. However, adsorption of dye molecules onto the TiO2 surface via an ester linkage can be unstable with moisture. In the present study, PbS QDs will be used as artificial reaction cen
Data Loading...
